This Is Ballroom review – pulsating documentary tells story of Brazilian ballroom

Originating among the Black, Latin and trans communities in 1960s New York, queer ballroom culture has not only entered the mainstream but also travelled well outside the United States. In recent years, a movement has flourished in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro and its outskirts, an evolution intimately captured in Juru and Vitã’s documentary debut. Here fly-on-the-wall recordings of a typical ball are interwoven with slice-of-life interviews, elaborating on the communal ties that extend beyond the dancefloor.

A whirl of pulsating beats, fabulous fits and gyrating bodies, the sensory opening gives us a taste of the different categories attached to the ball. Competing on behalf of their “houses” – queer chosen families of like-minded individuals – the participants show off their voguing, dancing and posing skills, all with the hope of snatching the top trophies. For those who have seen seminal ballroom documentary Paris is Burning (1990), many of these categories – such as Runway, Face and Femme Queens – will sound familiar. In addition to its US influences, Brazilian ballroom is also flavoured with local culture: some categories draw on samba and other forms of afro-Brazilian music, a deliberate nod to the Black pioneers of the scene.

These grounding details provide crucial regional contexts in the film but are a little too far and few in between. Still, as active ballroom members, Vitã and Juru have a rare insider point of view that distinguishes their work from other films on the same subject. With bracing honesty, the Brazilian ballroom scene is portrayed as a space of both solidarity and tension. When, for example, a ball is suddenly disrupted by a fight between members of feuding houses, the difficult moment is not swept under the carpet but prominently dissected to highlight the exclusion faced by performers who don’t conform to binaries of masculine and feminine presentation. Instead of simplistic hagiography, This is Ballroom is a film that calls for more tolerance and accountability, even within this niche subculture.